A recently uncovered Pentagon report warns that over the next 20 years climate change could lead to nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting across the world. The report was released internally four months ago, but was leaked to the media only last week.

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, the report states.

The findings should prove humiliating to the Bush administration, which has repeatedly denied that climate change exists while it has maintained that national security is a top priority.

Climate change "should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a U.S. national security concern," say the report’s authors, Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall.

Last week the Bush administration came under heavy fire from a large body of respected scientists who claimed that it cherry-picked science to suit its policy agenda and suppressed studies that it did not like. Jeremy Symons, a former whistleblower at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said that suppression of the report for four months was a further example of the White House trying to bury the threat of climate change.

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